


Applied Footwear and Other Friendship Rituals

by imagined_melody



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Acts of Kindness, Canon Autistic Character, Fluff, M/M, Neurodiversity, Shoes, Stimming, but he hopes they tie each other's shoes, troy doesn't quite know what best friends do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:01:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27800437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagined_melody/pseuds/imagined_melody
Summary: Abed doesn't know how to tie his shoes. Troy thinks he might be able to help.
Relationships: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Comments: 33
Kudos: 182





	Applied Footwear and Other Friendship Rituals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ivyaugust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivyaugust/gifts).



> For Jules and Ari, who helped me workshop this idea in the chat before I ever wrote it as a fic, and many of whose ideas made it wholesale into the final draft. And dedicated to the entire discord server, for the neverending supply of ideas and encouragement.

Everything about Abed moves fast. His brain works at high speeds, which means words tumble rapidly out of his mouth. He even walks fast, with his weirdly long legs, especially when he’s thinking and talking so quickly—sometimes Troy has to struggle to keep up. Right now, he’s half-jogging on the Greendale campus lawn behind Abed, who has been monologuing about Batman for the past few minutes. Troy slowed down to check his phone and in that time, Abed got so far ahead of him that now he has to rush to catch up. He keeps walking until he’s slightly ahead of Abed, and then tries to rejoin the conversation, which has seemingly turned to Bruce Wayne’s canon love interests.

“What about Catwoman?” he supplies, hoping this is conversational territory Abed hasn’t already covered. “I always thought it was weird in the comics when she got mindwiped and—Abed?”

Troy doesn’t even realize Abed’s no longer next to him until he hears the sudden fumbling _thud_ of his books dropping as he stumbles to the ground.

“Abed!” he says, running back to offer him a hand, even as Abed is already dusting himself off and rubbing at the elbow he banged on the ground as he fell. His hand is scraped and he looks annoyed. Troy busies himself picking up the books scattered across the pavement as Abed scrambles to his feet, wincing. “What happened? Did you trip on a branch? They really need to clear these sidewalks, I don’t know why we never see landscapers here.”

Abed is looking around shiftily. Troy thinks maybe he’s embarrassed about falling in public—Troy knows he would be, in his place—but on a second glance, it almost seems like his embarrassment is more centered around _Troy_ than anyone else. “It’s nothing. My shoes were untied and I tripped on the laces, that’s all.”

“Oh.” The explanation is simpler than he expected. “Um, do you want me to hold your books so you can tie them or something?”

Abed is still not meeting his eyes. “No, it’s okay, we can just go to class—” He starts to walk away, his still-untied shoelaces tapping against the ground. Troy doesn’t understand what’s going on, why this is suddenly so uncomfortable, but he wants to fix it.

“Wait!” he calls out; when Abed stops, he hurries over to him. “Just—can I tie them for you?” The idea sounds like an overstepping of boundaries when it leaves his mouth, but he doesn’t take it back. Abed looks at him warily; then, finally, he nods. 

Troy gestures to a nearby bench, and they sit down on it. Abed lifts one leg to prop it on the seat so his foot is extended towards Troy. His fingers go to work automatically: gathering up the white laces, crossing them over and looping them into a knot, then folding into little rabbit ears and knotting again until they’re securely tied. All the while, Abed watches him, still as a statue. His eyes are a little wider than usual.

“Other foot,” Troy says, and waits for Abed to pull his right foot in close to him and make room to extend his left. This one is still half tied, so all Troy has to do is reinforce and tighten the knot so it doesn’t come apart any further. His fingers linger on the lace when he’s finished. He doesn’t know what to do next, how to segue from this moment to the rest of their day.

“I don’t know how to tie my shoes,” Abed admits, quietly. “Some things just don’t make sense to me. Analog clocks don’t work with my brain. I get bothered by noises and lights and smells sometimes. I don’t like certain food textures or tastes. And I could never learn how to tie my shoes. No matter how many teachers tried to show me.”

“Okay,” Troy replies tentatively. “So why don’t—”

“Why don’t I just wear shoes that slip on? Or that I don’t need to tie?” Abed finishes. He sounds frustrated, like they’re having an old worn-out argument even though this is the first time they’ve talked about this. “I want to wear these shoes. I _like_ these shoes.”

“Okay,” Troy says again, in what he hopes is a reassuring voice. “That’s okay, buddy.” And it is—it really is, Troy realizes. Abed is clearly worried Troy will think there’s something wrong with him, but this is just another part of what makes Abed _Abed_ : he’s brilliant and unusual and he experiences the world differently. Troy smiles at him. “I can tie them for you if you want. So you don’t trip over them.”

It’s not easy to stun Abed into silence, but for a moment, Troy can see that he’s done it. Abed looks pleasantly surprised, like—like he was expecting to be teased and can’t understand why it isn’t happening. “They don’t come untied every day,” he says after a moment, hesitantly. “I just slip them on and off most times. So I wouldn’t always need—that.” He avoids saying the word _help_ , but it hangs in the air anyway.

“Well,” Troy replies, “that’s okay. I can meet you at your dorm, and we can walk to class together. Even if that’s all we do.” Their friendship still feels like a fragile new thing, and Troy is still figuring out how to nurture it, but he knows that somewhere along the line, he started desperately wanting to spend more time with Abed. 

Abed regards him carefully for a moment, and then shrugs. “Okay,” he agrees, finally. “I usually leave at 9.” He extends a hand and the two of them do their brand-new secret handshake. When they glance back at each other, Troy thinks he sees a hint of approval in Abed’s expression. It makes Troy think maybe he gets Abed, just a little. That maybe Abed just wants someone to treat him like he doesn’t need to be changed. 

Walking towards the library while Abed talks companionably at his side, Troy thinks he might understand what that feels like.

The last thing in his mind before he follows Abed into the library is a worry that his hand must hurt, since he can still see where it’s red and the skin is torn. Some deep-down part of him kind of wants to kiss it better. Is that something friends do? Maybe he should Google it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s not until the third time that Troy notices it.

He’s kneeling down on the ground in front of Abed, who’s seated on the couch, and tying his shoes. He’s almost finished when he notices a movement at Abed’s side and glances up. Abed is _tap tap tapping_ his fingers in the air, fluttering them next to him at a quick pace, and his upper body is rocking back and forth ever so slightly. There’s a look on his face that’s not quite a frown, and not quite focused—it’s blank, but not in a bad way. There isn’t tension in it.

Still, Troy is afraid for a second that Abed is stressed before he takes a mental step back and realizes that Abed is stimming. Abed has explained to him that he does this sometimes: when he’s stressed out, for one, or when he’s restless and needs stimulation or he won’t be able to calm down, but also when he has a lot of happy energy. The way other people smile to themselves, or sigh contentedly, sometimes Abed likes to move his body or make noises when he’s excited or pleased. It doesn’t happen all the time, he’s told Troy, but sometimes it confuses people when he does it. 

He’s doing it now. And Troy would be worried that Abed was uncomfortable with this—except that he hasn’t seemed upset about it after that first day, since it became a normal part of their daily routine: pick up Abed, get their books, talk about Inspector Spacetime, check if Abed’s shoes need tying. So Troy realizes with a sudden but not unpleasant shock: Abed is stimming because _he’s happy Troy is tying his shoes._

It seems like such a precious moment that Troy doesn’t say anything about it. Quickly he returns to doing up the laces, and then lets Abed’s foot drop back to the ground and, slightly awkwardly, pats the toe of his shoe. “Okay, you’re…all set,” he says. 

Abed comes to a gradual still and blinks down at him. “Okay,” he says, in his normal voice (which feels at odds with the way Troy’s heart is suddenly thudding in his chest). “Let me just grab something before we go.” Abed crosses to the other side of his room and comes back a moment later with a small fidget toy, already playing with its moveable parts as he walks. He’s humming faintly—not a song, by the sound of it, just a little vocalization somewhere in the back of his throat. If Troy weren’t listening for it, it would barely be audible.

The warm, good feeling of knowing he made Abed happy sticks with Troy the entire day.

~*~*~*~*~*~

There’s a part of Troy that secretly thinks that Abed will get tired of having him do this every day and ask him to stop. It’s the same part that, deep down, worries that Abed will get tired of _him._ But one year turns into the next, and it’s still a part of their routine. Troy finds himself getting excited for the first day back at Greendale after a break. Sometimes he sees Abed when they don’t have classes, but often Abed is busy helping his dad run the falafel shop or engrossed in some kind of spontaneous film project. Troy doesn’t really invite friends over to his place, and the study group as a whole tends to go their separate ways during breaks. But unfailingly, the night before they return to campus, their near-daily chat conversations end with a _see you at 9?_ from one of them, and a thumbs-up emoji or affirmative reaction gif from the other. And Troy will go to bed knowing that he’ll see Abed before anyone else tomorrow.

He notices that Abed stims more often when they do this. Half the time he already has a stim toy in his hand when Troy arrives, and he flicks its little spinny bits or squeezes it if it’s pliable like a stress ball. He rocks forward and back and taps the toe of the foot that Troy isn’t tending to. Sometimes he makes a very soft series of noises that sound like nonsense sounds, but which Troy thinks might be words in either Polish or Arabic, that he’s testing out and elongating and enunciating quietly in his mouth. When Troy finishes, Abed smiles at him, and it’s a smile that lives as much in his eyes as his mouth. 

It makes Troy feel good, to know that he gets to be a part of Abed’s day like this. Even though they’ve become an inseparable Troy-and-Abed pair that does nearly everything together, something about _this_ in particular still feels special. He gets to see Abed before the rest of the world sees him, to do something for him that most people don’t even do with another person. So that makes it an extra-special Troy-and-Abed thing, if you ask him.

When they move in together, their two sets of shoes mingle in a little pile by the door. Each morning, Troy will bend down to put on his own shoes; sometime while he’s tying them, Abed’s socked feet will appear next to him. Abed will either toe on the shoes and wait for Troy to tie them, or if he’s feeling playful, he’ll wiggle his toes until Troy picks up the shoe and holds it out, then stick his foot in and move it this way and that until the shoe slides on all the way. All the while, he’s usually talking about their classes, or the latest movie franchise news, or what he wants to do that weekend. 

Nothing about the situation feels unusual anymore. He has a moment of worry when Annie moves in, that she’ll comment on it or ask questions that he can’t answer because there _are_ no answers, no reasoning other than their own instinct to orient their lives around each other. But the first morning as they get ready to go out the door, she doesn’t say anything at all. Just smiles, and puts on her left-foot ballet flat before nudging Troy’s knee with her right, so he’ll retrieve the other shoe from where it fell a few inches away and slip it onto her foot like she’s Cinderella and he’s Prince Charming. When he looks up at Abed afterward, he has a fond smile on his face; he shoots Troy a tiny finger-gun with a whispered _pew!_ and extends a hand to pull him up off the floor.

Their fingers stay linked for a minute longer after he’s standing, Troy’s warm hand nestled in Abed’s cool one. As they walk through the door, Abed squeezes his hand before letting go to move in front of him. Troy hopes with all his heart that he’s stopped blushing by the time they get out onto the street where Annie can see him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The fourth year they spend as friends, Troy is stuck on what to get for Abed’s birthday. Abed’s gifts are always astonishingly thoughtful—he’s such an astute observer of people, and that means he pays close attention to their habits, their interests, what they need and want. So his gifts are creative and unexpected and perfect for their recipients. 

Troy knows Abed better than almost anyone else. He can list a thousand things Abed enjoys (or doesn’t enjoy). But he still isn’t at all sure he can give Abed something as meaningful as what Abed would give him. Knowing what Abed likes isn’t enough—Troy wants it to be significant, not just superficially relevant. The worst thing in the world would be for Abed to react to his gift with disinterest. 

He agonizes over the decision for weeks before placing the order. When the package arrives, weighing hardly anything and taped in a manila-colored mailing envelope, he tucks it under his mattress until the morning of Abed’s birthday. Then he transfers its contents to a small gift box, wraps it in tissue paper, and takes it out to their common room.

Abed is already there, sitting on the couch and polishing off a plate of the birthday French toast Annie had made him. (He’d been convinced that he wouldn’t like French toast because of the texture, even though Annie had told him it’s not that different from pancakes or waffles, but agreed to a test-run a few weeks ago when she was planning his birthday breakfast, and ended up eating two helpings.) The sound of water running in the bathroom means that Annie has gone in for her morning shower. Abed looks up at the sound of Troy’s footsteps; the corner of his mouth turns up in a smile. “Hey Troy,” he says, his voice bright. “Annie said she could make more breakfast for you when she’s out of the shower, if you want.”

Troy exhales. He’s nervous; why the fuck is he nervous? “Maybe,” he says, sliding onto the couch to sit next to Abed. “Happy birthday, man. I got you a present.” He hands the little box to Abed and watches as he tears through the paper and lifts off the lid.

Inside are several pairs of shoelaces. Troy had them custom-made: one set with an Inspector Spacetime quote and pictures of the characters, one with the Kickpuncher logo and poster art, a couple in bright colors that Abed tends to favor in his shirts and cardigans, and one pair with the phrase “Troy and Abed in the Morning!” printed across them, with cartoon pictures of their faces that the Etsy artist had drawn herself from photos he’d provided. Abed lifts each set of laces out of the box and looks at them in turn. His eyes are slightly wider than usual.

“I like tying your shoes,” Troy blurts out. “And when I tie my shoes, it reminds me of you now. So I got you something to make it special.” He tenses a little, bracing himself, and then finishes, “To make it _ours_.”

Abed is running his fingertips over one of the shoelaces, back and forth and back and forth, over the words _Troy and Abed_ again and again. “I was always worried that maybe you didn’t like doing it,” he says. “People always try to help me. They do it because they pity me, or they want to fix things so it’ll be nicer and easier for them. You didn’t seem to feel like that, but I thought probably you did anyway. Because most people do.” He’s twining the laces around his hand now, threading them back and forth between his fingers. “But you don’t. Do you?”

“No!” The words tumble out of Troy’s mouth instantly. “No, Abed, of course not! Wait—can I show you something?” Abed nods carefully, and Troy reaches into his pocket and pulls out a tangle of cotton laces out of his pocket. “I got these when I ordered yours. They’re all the same as the ones I gave you. I thought maybe we could wear them together, so our shoes would match.”

Abed stares down at the laces. “Can we put them on our shoes now?” he finally asks. 

They grab their most commonly-worn pairs of shoes and, without even discussing it, the _Troy and Abed in the Morning_ shoelaces. Abed has no trouble removing the old laces, but gets stuck on how to thread the new ones in. Without even thinking about it he passes the shoe to Troy, who pulls the ties through the little loops, crossing one over the other and biting his lip in concentration. Abed’s eyes keep moving slowly between Troy’s hands and his face. 

When he finishes, Troy hands the shoe back to Abed. He reaches out to take it, and their fingers brush—and that’s not new, they’ve touched before, but he almost flinches because Abed’s hand grazing his sends a shock through him like lightning. He feels his breath catch. Abed puts the shoe down on the ground, and then his fingers wrap around Troy’s wrist very lightly, which surprises him into looking up.

And that’s when Abed leans in and brushes their lips together.

It’s over almost as soon as it starts. Abed pulls back before Troy can really react: he seems nervous, like he wants something he’s afraid to ask for or is worried he’s misinterpreted something. They’re different expressions on Abed, even though Troy knows most people wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. “Abed, can I—” he says, and then lunges forward to kiss him before he can even finish the sentence, much less wait for Abed’s answer.

Troy may not be the most experienced in romance, but he knows he’s a good kisser. He got the technique of it down from a fairly early age. But kissing Abed is different, dizzying and mind-blowing, making his heart pound and his fingertips buzz. His expertise in technique has never mattered less; with the force of affection coursing through his body, he doesn’t need to rely on talent.

Or maybe Abed is just that good of a kisser too. That could be it. 

Abed’s hand is cradling his cheek when they finally pull apart. Troy wonders if he can feel the warmth of his blush under his palm. Slowly, he takes Abed’s hand and presses careful lips to his palm. Abed exhales slowly and closes his eyes, and Troy feels his heart soar.

“I don’t think it’s possible that I’m interpreting this wrong,” Abed says after a moment. “But just in case…”

Troy can’t help chuckling a little. “Abed, I like you. Like, I _like_ like you. Romantically. As more than a friend.”

Abed doesn’t say it back. But he does kiss Troy so hard and so hot that he thinks he gets the message.

**Author's Note:**

> I am on tumblr at [imaginedmelody](http://imaginedmelody.tumblr.com) if you want to chat all things Community (or any number of other topics)!


End file.
